Terms Of Service

Mothering.com is the website of natural family living and advocates natural solutions to parenting challenges. We host discussion of nighttime parenting, loving discipline, gentle weaning, natural birth, questioning vaccinations, homebirth, successful breastfeeding, alternative and complementary home remedies, informed consent and many other topics from a natural point of view. We are not interested, however, in hosting discussions that advocate crying it out, harsh sleep training, physical punishment, formula feeding, elective cesarean section, routine infant medical circumcision, or mandatory vaccination. We do not tolerate any type of discrimination in the discussions, including but not limited to racism, heterosexism, classism, sizeism, religious bigotry, or discrimination toward the disabled. We will not host discussions that involve explicit sexual references and are cautious about discussions on volatile topics such as abortion, religion and race. We do not host abortion debate.

Our Community serves an online community of parents, families, and parent, child and family advocates considering, learning, practicing, and advocating attachment parenting and natural family living. Our discussions concern the real world of mothering and are first and foremost, for support, information, and community. Mothering invites you to read and participate in the discussions. In doing so we ask that you agree to respect and uphold the integrity of this community. Through your direct or indirect participation here you agree to make a personal effort to maintain a comfortable and respectful atmosphere for our guests and members. Please avoid negative characterizations and generalizations about others to respect the diversity of our online community.

Registration to this forum is free! We do insist that you abide by the rules and policies detailed below. Your continued use of this site following the effective date of such changes to these Terms will mean you accept those changes.

Although the administrators and moderators of Mothering will attempt to keep all objectionable messages, reviews, and Wiki articles off this forum, it is impossible for us to review all site content. All contents expresses the views of the author, and neither the owners of Mothering will be held responsible for the content of any message, review, Wiki article, or other item on the site.

By agreeing to these rules, you warrant that you will not post any messages that are obscene, vulgar, sexually-oriented, hateful, threatening, or otherwise violative of any laws.

The owners of Mothering reserve the right to remove, edit, move or close any thread, Wiki article, review area, etc. for any reason.

Privacy Policy

This privacy policy describes how Mothering treats the personally identifiable information that is collected about you when you visit the web site to which this policy is linked. What is Personally Identifiable Information “Personally identifiable information” is information that we can use to identify you as an individual. Personally identifiable information includes your name, address, telephone number and any other information that is connected with you personally.

Information This Privacy Policy Does Not Apply To

This privacy policy does not apply to information collected about you by anyone except Mothering and only applies to the web sites to which this policy is linked. Any information you provide when you visit web sites other than those covered by this policy or when you purchase any products or services, or enter contests, that may be linked to or advertised on our web site by companies other than Mothering is subject to the privacy policies posted on those sites. Except as may be otherwise specified herein, this policy also does not apply to information you may provide to us offline.

Collection of Personally Identifiable Information

Mothering generally collects personally identifiable information with your specific knowledge and consent. When you register on Mothering, we collect your email address, username, password. These are required for users to store and modify bookmarks and other content on the site. We will also collect your bookmarks and associated content, messages, IP address, and information from browser data and cookies.

Your User ID, bookmarks, lists and associated content and any postings you make to the forums and wikis are displayed throughout the Site. Therefore this data is available to the public and will be identifiable to your User ID.

This information may sometimes be collected by third party service providers with whom Mothering contracts to host the web site or to fulfill requests for services; in that event, Mothering asks such service providers to make the personal information available only to Mothering to use in accordance with the terms of this policy and not to use the information for any other purpose. Mothering uses this information to allow you to enjoy the functionality of the site, to troubleshoot and to provide customer support. In addition, Mothering may use your bookmarks to improve our marketing and promotional efforts by providing targeted advertising based on the content of your Product Profile.

We do not sell or rent any of your personal information to third parties for their marketing purposes. If you send an email using the service to an email address that is not registered in our community, we do not use that email address for any purpose other than to send your email. We do not rent or sell these email addresses, nor do we send them marketing messages. Other users may send emails and in-system messages to you via the Mothering service. Mothering does not review these messages before they are sent to you. If you are receiving inappropriate private messages or any form of spam, contact a Mothering administrator and swift action will be taken on the offending user’s account. On an aggregate, non-personally identifiable level we may also use this data to analyze site usage, customize the site’s content, layout, and services, and for disclosure to advertisers and other third parties for their marketing and promotional purposes and to demonstrate to them the value of our own site. However, we do not sell or rent any of your personally identifying data to third parties for marketing purposes.

When you register for the first time on Mothering, you will be automatically opted in to receive email notices, which may include notification if someone sends you a message, Mothering newsletters and announcements, and notification of new activity on your subscriptions.

When you transfer to the site of a retailer, your shopping activity will be conducted on their site, and in accordance with that retailer’s own privacy policy and terms of service. Mothering has no control over those policies, so you should carefully review them before you conduct any business on a third party site. In the unlikely event that we believe that the security of your personal information in our possession or control may have been compromised, we may seek to notify you of that development. If a notification is appropriate, we would endeavor to do so as promptly as possible under the circumstances, and, to the extent we have your e-mail address, we may notify you by e-mail. In addition to the foregoing Mothering may share or disclose personally identifiable information about you to other companies or individuals when:

we utilize third party service providers to provide products, services or functions on our behalf (such as sending emails or processing credit cards or fulfilling subscriptions), and ask these service providers to agree to maintain the confidentiality of your personally identifiable information and not to use your personally identifiable information for any reason except to carry out the purpose(s) for which we hired them;

you have entered a contest or sweepstakes sponsored by a third party, in which case the information may be shared with that third party for their use in their discretion, including direct marketing. (Some of our contests and sweeps will ask you at the time of entry whether you would like your personal information to be shared with the sponsor. Other contests will not give you that option and in that event, if you do not want your information to be shared, you should not enter the contest);

you have furnished us personal information with the intent that it be forwarded to a third party for use in connection with a specified service you are electing to participate in (examples include, without limitation, e-commerce partners, services to help old friends locate you online, etc.);

we need to protect our legal rights

we must comply with applicable laws, regulations, or legal or regulatory process;

we have reason to believe that someone may be causing injury to or interference with our rights or the rights of our users, or general public, or using our services in violation of a legal or personal right

Cookies

Mothering (or third party service providers on our behalf) may set and access cookies on your computer. A cookie is a small amount of data (often including a unique identifier), that is sent to your browser from a web site’s computers and stored on your computer’s hard drive. Mothering uses cookies to understand site usage and to improve the content and offerings on our site. We may use cookies, IP address and browser data to control the display of ads, to track usage patterns on the sites, to deliver editorial content, and to personalize information. Our cookies may contain personally identifiable information and such cookies may be shared with others to the same extent indicated above.

Mothering (or third party service providers on our behalf) may also use cookies to collect aggregate information about web site users on an anonymous basis. We may share aggregate demographic and usage information with our prospective and actual business partners, advertisers and other third parties for any business purpose. Some of our advertisers may serve you cookies as well. We do not have control over cookies placed by advertisers. If you don’t want cookies, most Web browsers include an option that allows you to not accept them. However, if you set your browser to refuse cookies, some portions of our sites may not function efficiently.

IP Address

Your Internet Protocol (“IP”) address is usually associated with the place from which you enter the Internet, like your Internet Service Provider, your company or your university. Our server may also record the referring page that linked you to us (e.g., another Web site or a search engine); the pages you visit on the sites, the Web site you visit after our site; the ads you see; the ads you click on; other information about the type of Web browser, computer, platform, related software and settings you are using; any search terms you have entered on this Web Site or a referral site; and other Web usage activity and data logged by our Web servers. We may use your IP address to help diagnose problems with our servers, gather broad demographic information, and administer our website. We may also link this information with your personal information when we feel that it is necessary to enforce compliance with our rules and policies or terms of service or to protect our Sites, customers or others.

Advertising Disclosure

We use a third-party advertising company to serve ads when you visit our website and sites upon which we advertise. This technology uses information about your visits to this website and the sites upon which we advertise, to serve our ads to you. In the course of serving our advertisements to you, a unique third-party cookie may be placed or recognized on your browser. In addition, we may use Web beacons, provided by our third-party advertising company, to help manage our online advertising. These Web beacons enable our third-party ad serving company to recognize a browser’s cookie when a browser visits this site and to learn which banner ads bring users to our website.

Kids and Parents

The sites covered by this policy are not intended for use by children, especially those under age 13. No one under age 18 is allowed to provide any personal information or use our public discussion areas.

If your children disclose information about themselves in our public discussion areas, they may get unsolicited messages from other parties. Accordingly, you should tell them not to do so. There are also commercially available tools to help you limits your children’s exposure to material online.

All User Generated Content within Mothering

If you elect to post material to any wikis, forums, reviews or other content generation mediums that may be offered on our sites, or if you elect to upload any photographs, audio or video, you will be solely responsible for all content, messages, text, files, images, graphics, photos, audio clips, sounds, video or other materials (the “Postings”). You agree and warrant that any Postings you post to the sites will be true and accurate, will not defame any person or invade any person’s privacy, and will not infringe the proprietary rights of any person. You agree not to furnish any Postings to which you do not own the rights. By furnishing Postings, you give Mothering the right to use such Postings in any manner and in any media now known or hereafter invented, including, without limitation, the right to combine your Postings with Postings of third parties in varied combinations. You give Mothering indefinite license to display your posts and you hold not right to removal of your posts from the site. You also acknowledge that visitors to the sites may post comments about your Postings which may be derogatory, and that Mothering has no obligation to monitor or delete any such postings. Please be aware that Mothering does not and cannot monitor all of the Postings made to the sites, and therefore Mothering will not be responsible for the content of any Postings. However, Mothering does reserve the right to delete or edit any material in any Posting that is obscene, harassing, offensive or otherwise objectionable and not in keeping with the community standards of the site. If Mothering elects to edit any Postings, it nonetheless assumes no responsibility for the content of the Postings. Under no circumstances will Mothering be liable for any inaccuracy or defect in any Postings. We also expect our users to adhere to certain rules of etiquette. Therefore, you agree not to post, email, or otherwise make available Postings:

that are unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, pornographic, libelous, or invasive of another’s privacy, or harmful to minors in any way;

that harass, degrade, intimidate or are hateful toward an individual or group of individuals on the basis of religion, gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, age, or disability;

that include personal or identifying information about another person without that person’s explicit consent.

that are false, deceptive, misleading, deceitful, misinformative, constitute “bait and switch” or impersonation of any person or entity;

contain your own or a third party’s advertising, branding or promotional content;

that infringe any proprietary rights, including copyright, of any party, or Postings that you do not have a right to make available;

restrict or inhibit any other user from using and enjoying the Mothering sites or the Mothering services offered on them.

Because Mothering does not monitor the Postings, you agree to use and rely on them at your own risk. Mothering cannot make any representation or warranty about the material contained in the Postings. Mothering likewise assumes no responsibility for any contact you may have with other users of our sites, either online or offline. If you elect to meet in person with someone you may meet on our sites, you do so at your own risk, and under no circumstances will Mothering be liable for any activity or injury that may occur.

Commercial Use Policy

Any commercial or promotional distribution, publishing or exploitation of the sites, or any content, code, data or materials on the sites is strictly prohibited; unless you have requested and received permission Mothering. This applies to all forums, Wiki articles and reviews. As a general rule, these posts and links are NOT permitted, regardless of how the post or link is framed (including but not limited to direct advertisements, adverquestions, or introtisements). This policy applies to ‘free’ offers and promotional activities, as well as direct commercial overtures or transactional links.

Restrictions on Use

You agree that you will not:

use the Site to personally attack, threaten, stalk, defraud, incite, harass, or advocate the harassment of another person, or otherwise interfere with another user’s use of the Site;

use the Site to transmit or post spam, chain letters, contests, junk email, pyramid schemes, surveys, or other mass messaging, whether commercial in nature or not;

use the Site for promotional or commercial purposes, except as expressly permitted by Mothering;

use the Site in a manner that may create a conflict of interest, such as trading reviews or writing or soliciting shill reviews;

use the Site for keyword spamming or to otherwise attempt to manipulate search results;

use the Site to promote bigotry or discrimination;

use the Site to violate any third-party right, including any breach of confidence, copyright, trademark, patent, trade secret, moral right, privacy right, right of publicity, or any other intellectual property or proprietary right;

use the Site to transmit or post pornography or illegal content;

use the Site to solicit personal information from minors or to harm or threaten to cause harm to minors;

use the Site in violation of the Terms of Service or any applicable law;

register for multiple accounts on the Site;

modify, adapt, appropriate, reproduce, distribute, translate, create derivative works or adaptations of, publicly display, sell, trade, or in any way exploit the Site or Site Content (other than Your Content), except as expressly authorized by Mothering;

reverse engineer any portion of the Site, except as may be permitted under the law;

remove or modify any copyright, trademark or other proprietary rights notice on the Site or on any materials printed or copied off of the Site;

record, process, or mine information about other users;

use any robot, spider, site search/retrieval application, or other automated device, process or means to access, retrieve, scrape, or index the Site or any Site Content;

access, retrieve or index the Site to construct or populate a searchable database of business reviews;

reformat or frame any portion of the Site;

attempt to gain unauthorized access to the Site, user accounts, computer systems or networks connected to the Site through hacking, password mining or any other means; use the Site or any Site Content to transmit any computer viruses, worms, defects, Trojan horses or other items of a destructive nature (collectively, “Viruses”); use any device, software or routine that interferes with the proper working of the Site, or otherwise attempt to interfere with the proper working of the Site; make excessive traffic demands; use the Site to violate the security of any computer network, crack passwords or security encryption codes; disrupt or interfere with the security of, or otherwise cause harm to, the Site or Site Content; remove, circumvent, disable, damage or otherwise interfere with any security-related features of the Site, features that prevent or restrict the use or copying of Site Content, or features that enforce limitations on the use of the Site.

California and Canadian Users

California and Canadian residents have the right to know how their information may be shared with third parties who engage in direct marketing activities and this policy explains our practices and how you can opt out of having your information shared for such purposes. We do not make any personally identifying information available to third parties for marketing purposes. If you enter a contest or sweepstakes sponsored by a third party, information may be shared with that third party for their use in their discretion, including direct marketing (Some of our contests and sweeps will ask you at the time of entry whether you would like your personal information to be shared with the sponsor. Other contests will not give you that option and in that event, if you do not want your information to be shared, you should not enter the contest.)

Non-U.S. Users

If you are located outside of the United States, please note that the information you provide to us will be transferred to the United States. By using this web site, you consent to this transfer. You also consent to the adjudication of any disputes arising in connection with this website in the federal and state courts of, and in accordance with the laws of, the state of California.

Copyright

Content posted on the Mothering by us is owned by us or used with permission. You may not copy, use, or retransmit anything from or for our site without our permission. Any commercial or promotional distribution, publishing or exploitation of the sites, or any content, code, data or materials on the sites is strictly prohibited. You may not offer goods for sale or use the Mothering site and service for any commercial service without our prior consent.

The third-party images and text referenced, made accessible or made available to you on these pages or by means of Mothering service are protected by the copyright and trademark laws of the United States and other countries. You may need to obtain authorization of the owner of such materials before using them for any purpose other than viewing on the web. It is your responsibility to obtain any authorizations to use an image or text that may be required; Mothering cannot give you such authorization. We cannot guarantee that the Mothering Service will not locate unintended or objectionable content and Mothering accepts no responsibility or liability for the content of any images or text included in any Mothering list or otherwise linked to by the Mothering services, or for your use of such content. Mothering reserves the right to remove any pictures or content without notice to you, any other user, or any third party.

You are not allowed to post or distribute any material you do not own or which you do not have permission to use. You are also prohibited from engaging in any conduct that interferes with the technological operation of the sites or that tampers with any copyright protection mechanisms applicable to content on any sites. The technology and the software underlying our sites and the Services is the property of Mothering, our affiliates, and our partners. You agree not to copy, modify, rent, lease, loan, sell, assign, distribute, reverse engineer, grant a security interest in, or otherwise transfer any right to the technology or software underlying our sites or the Services. You agree not to modify the software underlying our sites in any manner or form or to use modified versions of such software, including (without limitation) for the purpose of obtaining unauthorized access to our sites.

Ignoring this policy may result in copyright, trademark, or other intellectual property rights violations.

Passwords

The registration information you provide must be true, accurate, current, and complete. You must promptly update your registration to keep it accurate, current, and complete. If we issue you a password, you may not reveal it to anyone else. You may not use anyone else’s password. You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your accounts and passwords. You agree to immediately notify us of any unauthorized use of your passwords or accounts or any other breach of security. You also acknowledge that failure to exit from your accounts at the end of each session may result in unauthorized use of your accounts. We will not be responsible for any loss or damage that may result if you fail to comply with these requirements.

Changes to Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Mothering may change its terms of service and privacy policy from time to time at its discretion. Your continued use of our sites indicates your consent to these terms and policies and any amended versions of them.